


Crack the Shutters

by fredesrojo



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post S2, or well as close as these two get to fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredesrojo/pseuds/fredesrojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An observation on scars, and the stories they tell with their marks on the human body.</p>
<p>~“Scars tell a story, they let other people know how brave you were. They’re a map, so others can see all the things you’ve done in your life.” </p>
<p>He wants to know the new things, he wants to catch up, to see the crucible cast that formed from the old MacKenzie to the one dozing in his arms now. He owes it to her to bear witness to how she’s molded herself, blunted and rearranged her edges to fit up against his. ~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crack the Shutters

**Author's Note:**

> almost married McAvoys fluff, mostly, and a general treatise on scars and human topography

 

_“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”_

_― **Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game**_

* * *

 

He can never get enough of the fact that he can touch her again, feel her skin warm against his.

 

He likes it like this, quiet and resting against one another, skin against skin where he can trace his fingers down the planes and curves of her form--learning and re-learning her topography.

 

She’s different now (so is he, to an extent), and there’s new additions to the topography of her anatomy and being that he takes the time to commit to memory now.

 

(There’s a part of him that wants the stories, the actions and events that led to these new marks and lines across her skin.

 

Will remembers when he was younger, over hearing his mother telling a story to calm Fi’s anxiety over a nasty scar on her forehead from running into the bars on the jungle gym on the playground.

 

_“Scars tell a story, they let other people know how brave you were. They’re a map, so others can see all the things you’ve done in your life.”_

 

He wants to know the new things, he wants to catch up, to see the crucible cast that formed from the old MacKenzie to the one dozing in his arms now. He owes it to her to bear witness to how she’s molded herself, blunted and rearranged her edges to fit up against his.

 

He’s changed too, her presence an almost direct catalyst to the 180 degree turnaround from the Will McAvoy of before and the Will McAvoy _now_.)

 

Will traces the pads of his fingers lightly over the angular rise of her shoulder blade and the light scattering of lines there, wondering absently to their origin.

 

“Tickles,” Mac mutters, the muscles in her back flexing and flowing under his hand as she shifts closer.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Didn’t mean ‘stop’,” She says dryly, face half turned in the sheets to peer at him crookedly. “What are you doing?”

 

Will smiles, resuming the light trace of his fingers across her skin. “Mapping.”

 

“Mapping _what_?”

 

“Scars.” He finally admits honestly, tracing up her back to her shoulder and then down that arm to mid-tricep, where a thin discoloration stretches a straight line from front to back. “Did you know that scars can tell a story about a person’s life?”

 

“If this is one of your allegorical moments again I’m afraid you’re going to lose me,” Mac mumbles, relaxing drowsily under the motions of his hands smoothing across her skin. “You’re putting me to sleep.”

 

“I was just--it was a story, something my mom used to say.” He rubs his thumb up against the line, tracing its path across her skin. “Scars can tell you how a person’s lived their life, where they’ve been.”

 

One hazel eye pops back open again, a spark of interest glowing there as a lazy smile curls the side of her mouth he can see. “You want the stories. Mapping.”

 

“Mapping,” Will nods.

 

“...Oh, go on then.” Mac rolls slowly onto her back, grinning crookedly at him. “I’ll expect reciprocity of some form, though.”

 

(Shit, she’s beautiful. He has to stop for a second, because while Mac’s general opinion on the validity of his statement that she’s the most attractive woman he’s ever met in his life wanes and waxes depending on her mood, he wasn’t lying.)

 

Will shakes out of his thoughts, rolling over to prop himself up on his elbows next to the smooth expanse of her abdomen. The jagged curve there is probably the noticeable reminder of her time spent overseas--he knows part of the story behind it, if not most, but the urge to know _more_ still exists. Mac watches through half-lidded eyes as he traces it first with his hands and then lips, propping his chin up against the rise of her hip.

 

“You said Charlie told you,” She murmurs, reaching down to brush her fingers through his hair.

 

“He--I didn’t really listen, at the time,” Will hedges, leaning into her touch lightly. “I was--once he said you’d been stabilized and brought on the medevac to Germany, I tuned out.”

 

Mac sighs, one corner of her mouth twitching up in a resigned smile. “You listened until you were sure I was okay, and then you tuned out for fear of looking like you cared too much.”

 

“It wasn’t one of my greater moments, okay,” He huffs, craning forward to nip at the inside of her wrist. “I know you were covering the protests in Islamabad.”

 

“Mhmm.” She shifts under him slightly, getting comfortable, and her voice is soft as she begins the tale. “Shiite protest, in one of the bigger streets. God, Jim hated it there, even at the beginning. We were very obviously American--or, well, he was very obviously American and I was very obviously working for an American broadcast corporation--and it made him nervous as hell and he just...well, I suppose he was right in the end.”

 

“You got attacked.”

 

Mac shushes him with two fingers. “It was only supposed to be two weeks or so at first, but then the protests kept going, and…”

 

“You wanted the story.”

 

“Yeah,” She muses quietly, her fingers resuming their work in smoothing through his hair. “Jim was behind the camera--we didn’t take the full crew with us, Tom and Mick and a few others stayed back in the Green Zone because we thought it was going to be such a small job so it was just Jim and Danny and I--and Danny was checking levels and making sure we had a decent vantage point and I was on camera…” She trails off for a moment, finally drawing breath to continue. “I don’t really remember it, mostly. Jim said I was talking and then I wasn’t there--I was, I was just on the ground, and they nearly lost the camera, and then Jim found me.”

 

It’s not better, hearing it like this, so detached and calm, but Will supposes they both have different ways of dealing with things. Trembling, he reaches out to trace along the jagged scar again, finger meeting up with her own hand in the middle. Mac threads her fingers through his and squeezes lightly, her other hand still brushing through the hair near his temple.

 

“He didn’t leave the knife in, whoever it was that stabbed me,” Mac ventures after a long minute, resting their joined hands against her stomach. “I do remember that. There was the knife going in, and then he sort of...twisted, and the knife was gone, and Jim was staring down at me.”

 

(Shit. Okay, he needs something else to focus on, this is--intellectually, he knows she’s alive and here and in bed with him, but his heart still pounds at the thought that she could have _died_ , all for a story because she sent herself away, sent herself far from _him_.)

 

Mac watches him cautiously, worry bleeding through her gaze, and he has to make a conscious effort to reign in the tortured direction of his thoughts.

 

“Jim found you.”

 

“Mhmm.” She relaxes, the worry around her eyes easing back into calm focus.  “Jim found me, and I got airlifted to Landstuhl. Then four weeks later I’d thrown myself back into Afghanistan, and then I failed a series of psych evals, and they sent me home.” Her head tilts, considering. “Or, well, to Washington. And then there was Northwestern, and Charlie called with a job offer, and I came back.”

 

“You came back and goaded me into doing the news again.” Will tilts his head to press a kiss against the skin sloping up to her hip, his frown relaxing back into a smile.

 

“Inspired. ‘Goaded’ seems a bit much.”

 

“Whatever, Dulcinea.”

 

“I’m Don Quixote.”

 

“No, Charlie is Don Quixote, I’m Sancho, and you’re Dulcinea.” He frowns, thinking. “...I think. Maybe it’s the other way around.”

 

“...I really think we’ve completely lost track of who is meant to be whom in this whole analogy,” Mac finally mutters, dropping her head back against the bed. “I think the staff are the horse, though.”

 

“Donkey.”

 

“ _Whatever_.”

 

Will grins mostly to hold back a real laugh and shifts his position slightly, one hand spreading flat against her right thigh. “What about this one?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“This one, here.” He rubs his thumb against a patch of shiny white skin, skewed in two different directions. It’s only a few inches wide, about the length of one of his fingers curving along the outside of her thigh.

 

“Oh, that one.” She wrinkles her nose. “Shrapnel wound--it was some sort of crude bomb, I think. We were unlucky, caught the tail end of the blast radius. Jim’s got a scar on his shin,” She muses, still thinking back. “We were somewhere in Pakistan for that--Khyber Pass, I think.”

 

“Covering what?”

 

Mac’s hand cuts through the air sharply, silencing him as the thought finally connects. “Landi Kotal! That’s where it was. We came through there from Peshawar to cover a series of meetings between the Americans and some FATA leaders about setting up ROZ’s in the area.”

 

“Uh. ...What?”

 

“Reconstruction Opportunity Zone within one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. We were there to cover the meetings and the Marine unit we traveled with was assigned as security--”

 

“And someone still got a bomb in there?”

 

“No, it was out on the street,” Mac says, brow wrinkled as she thinks through. “Stop interrupting. Anyway, the meeting was taking a break for something or another and Jim and I decided to take a short walk through the marketplace. One of the Marines came with us--Cartwright, maybe, or Lorenzo--and we walked along the one side, the other side was a lot of stalls and then the open area in the middle. As it turned out later, there was a rather crude bomb planted in one of the stalls nearer to the end. It went off, and we caught the outer edge of the blast.” Absentmindedly, she traces over the line marking her leg. “Now, I can’t really remember what it was that went into my leg exactly, it was just a smallish chunk of, well, something. Superglue, Tetanus shot, and I was mostly good as new.”

 

“Mostly?”

 

“Oh, it hurt, but I was really just irritated because Jim wouldn’t quit bitching that he just recovered from getting shot in the arse only to catch shrapnel from a poor-man’s incendiary.” Mac tilts her head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Jim bitched an awful lot, for a man.”

 

“Wasn’t he raised in a house full of girls?”

 

“Well, yes, but I meant more in general. I think Jim complained more about being over there than I did.” She shrugs, hands flopping limply to rest on her stomach.

 

“You’re an only child.”

 

“Exactly!”

 

“So what, you should have been the one complaining?”

 

“Yea--wait. No.” Mac frowns. “I don’t know what I meant.” She waves her hand vaguely in midair, sighing. “Nevermind. Suffice to say Jim whined a lot, and it was annoying.”

 

“He still whines.”

 

“Hmph. Not as bad as it used to be.”

 

“And he does that thing with his face where it kind of scrunches up.”

 

She snorts. “Honey, _you_ do the thing with your face where it kind of scrunches up. He’s imitating you.”

 

“Wait, what?”

 

“Don’t worry about it.”

 

“But…”

 

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” She stretches enough to pat his cheek patronizingly, smirking.

 

Will pinches her side in retaliation, choosing to let it go for now. He traps her hand before she can withdraw it, rubbing his thumb against a small circular scar between her thumb and index finger. “What happened here?”

 

“Oh, God.” Mac laughs, shaking her head. “You really don’t want to know. That one is embarrassing.”

 

“What the hell did you do?” Will splays his own fingers wide, squinting at his hand and then the corresponding spot on hers. “Did you hook yourself on something?”

 

“No, no, nothing like that. I was--well, we were looking at a map, and for lack of a proper table we just had it spread across a couple of sets of sawhorses, and long story short, I slapped my hand down on the end of one to make a point and it turns out there was a nail sticking up.”

 

“No...you didn’t.”

 

“I did,” Mac groans, shaking her head. “I slammed my hand down on a nail. And Jim started yelling at me and I just couldn’t figure out why or why the fuck my hand was stuck so I just pulled really hard and then Jim’s yelling made sense because my hand starts bleeding all over the damn place--it was kind of funny, later. The Marines thought I was hardcore.”

 

He feels the chuckle building up almost without his permission but even Mac has that crinkle-eyed grin she gets when she’s laughing at herself, and he drops his head to rest against her stomach, laughing loudly.

 

“Ugh, I told you it was embarrassing,” She moans through a laugh, one arm swept up over her face.

 

“That is hardcore, you slammed your hand on a nail and then pulled it back off.”

 

“The Marines certainly thought so.” Mac sighs and lifts her arm enough to peer down at him, still laughing. “Jim was just so furious that I didn’t listen to him and pulled my hand off.”

 

“What were you supposed to do?”

 

“I know! I couldn’t figure out why my hand was stuck, so I just pulled!”

 

Will snorts another laugh, capturing her waving hand to press a kiss to the pinhole scars there. “I would have pulled my hand away.”

 

“I’m reasonably sure _anyone_ would have, which is why it was so ludicrous that Jim kept yelling at me. I didn’t even know the nail had gone through my hand.” Mac giggles a few more times, smiling in that self-deprecating way she often has. “The medic was most surprised that I’d missed all the bones in my hand.”

 

“Eh. At least you didn’t get shot in the ass.” He grins up at her, kissing her hip when she huffs disgruntledly. “So, if that’s the most embarrassing one, what do we have left?”

 

“Hm.” She frowns, chewing on her lip in thought. “Well there’s the ones I got from diving into broken glass, but they’re not very interesting.”

 

“You _dove_ onto broken glass?”

 

“ _Obviously_ not intentionally,” Mac sniffs, tilting her chin up haughtily. “We were diving for cover. Mine just happened to be in the middle of a lot of broken glass.” She breaks character to smirk down at him, continuing, “It’s okay, Jim’s is better, he dove into a goat pen once. The farmer was _furious_.”

 

“Goat pen, broken glass...goat pen, broken glass…” Will holds his hands up like a scale, tilting them significantly one way to show the difference. “I still think I’d take the goat pen with Jim.”

 

“Well, there wasn’t a lot of real estate to be diving on to begin with, and it was dark. I went with what I had.” She nudges him out of the way enough to bend her leg, pointing to the pale skin on the inside of her left knee. If he squints, he can just barely make out a scattering of thin white lines on the side of her knee, stretching down to the sensitive crease at the back. “There’s a few there, more on the outside of my elbow, and then some high up on my back from where I rolled over.”

 

“What were you doing diving for cover anyways?”

 

“Bombing raid? I think it was. We had them a lot.” Mac nods more decisively. “Yeah, it was. Middle of the night and suddenly there’s gunfire all over the place and bombs being lobbed over the wall and we’re half trying to get our boots on and half running for cover. One of the bombs landed pretty close to where we were so we all just dove for cover, and my particular spot of choice was littered with broken glass.” She leans forward to show him the side of her arm, where a similar patch of thin white scars litter the skin on the outside of her elbow. “I realized as soon as my leg scraped and then rolled to cover my face and got a few pieces stuck in my back.”

 

_That’s_ what he felt on her shoulder blade earlier. Will lifts himself off of her lower half, tapping her hip to make her turn over on her front.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I want to see.”

 

Mac rolls her eyes but complies seemingly despite herself, rolling onto her front and pillowing her head in her arms. “It’s strictly necessary to _see_ everything to map it?”

 

“Well...no.” He traces over the lines marking her back, the same thin white cluster mirrored on her knee and elbow. “I just…it makes it more real. If I can see it.”

 

“And it wasn’t real before?”

 

“No, I mean--” Will sighs, flopping onto the mattress next to her. “I’m curious. I want to--we’ve both changed.” He reaches out again, tracing the line of her back, fingers skipping over topography old and new. “I’m documenting the changes, how it all fits together. New to old, old to new.”

 

Her brows wrinkle and then relax, one corner of her mouth twitching into a thoughtful frown. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’ve got considerably more grey hair than you did before we--hey!” Mac twists away from his tickling with a laugh, trying to roll away.

 

Will chases her across the bed, dignity be damned. “You said it makes me look distinguished!”

 

“Kidding! Kidding, I was joking, _stop tickling me!”_

 

They finally come to a rest almost toppled over the opposite edge of the bed, Mac giggling under him as he brackets her in with his forearms, and he has to kiss her like this, happy and carefree and in bed together.

 

(He’s making no sense, but whatever. He’s in love. It’s allowed.)

 

Mac is still grinning when he pulls back from the kiss, eyes crinkled in the corners in the way that they do when she’s truly _happy_ , and Will marvels at the fact that she’s happy and he’s happy.

 

It’s taken 6 years of being worlds apart and then back in the same city but not quite together (except they kind of were, in that oddly co-dependent way that Sloan likes to tease about, and Charlie, and practically the entire newsroom, but he doesn’t care because they _are_ together now--for good) but working together on a show that they both could be proud of.

 

(Even with the trial, _News Night_ has finally made it back to that upswing in the ratings--they’re not the best or most watched by any means, but numbers are definitely looking up.

 

Not that he’s worried about that kind of thing anymore.

 

They’re doing the news no matter if a few hundred thousand or three quarters of a million people watch every night.)

 

Mac brings him back from his thoughts with a gentle hand threading through his hair, though her eyes are fond as she gazes up at him. “Satisfied with your mapping?”

 

“I’m not old,” He feels obligated to grumble, smiling despite himself when she giggles.

 

“I told you I _like_ the grey, it makes you look distinguished.” Her thumb trails through the hair at his temple, soothing and arousing all at once. “Besides, you’re blonde. Of the two of us, I think _my_ grey hairs are going to be much more obvious.”

 

“Your mom still doesn’t have much grey,” Will finally points out, making a show of studying the fine hairs strewn across her forehead seriously--just to provoke another round of laughter, of course. “You might escape it.”

 

“Mmm, we’ll see.” Mac shifts, clenching her knees in at his waist, and then she’s inverting their positions, knocking him over on his back with her straddled on top of him.

 

“What are you doing?” He laughs, moving just enough to find a comfortable position against the tangled sheets as his hands find their natural position around her waist.

 

She makes a show of squinting down at him, thin hands and nimble fingers tracing infinite lines up and down his torso. “...Mapping.”

 

“I thought that was my line.”

 

Mac scowls, digging her knuckle into the ticklish spot just below his ribs. “What, I’m not allowed to do it too?”

 

“As you wish,” Will settles back, tucking his hands behind his head as Mac traces her way around the topography of his own body.

 

(His scars, the bulk of them, are not visible marks upon skin like hers.

 

Not to say that he doesn’t have his fair share of physical scars, just that the emotional ones sometimes leave far greater wounds.

 

It takes work, to discuss it, even now, but they’re both making the effort.

 

Mac has gotten good at dragging things out of him again, at getting him to talk--not in a bad way, not _forcing_ , but supportive. Exorcising his demons, as it were.

 

Not that he’ll admit it, but the fact that they _didn’t_ talk might have had a factor in the disintegration of their relationship the first time around. They both kept things from one another--it’s taken a while, but he agrees with her now… it wasn’t serious at first, and they were both sending mixed messages.

 

Between somewhat weekly sessions with Habib and both of them making a concentrated effort to make it work this time around, Will is in a place now where he can talk to Mac, and where she can talk to him.

 

It’s better. _Will and MacKenzie 2.0_ , Mac jokes.)

 

Mac skims her nails against the ticklish spot on his ribcage, smiling when he blinks his eyes open again. “You’re falling asleep on me.”

 

“Feels good,” Will mutters, thumbs stroking the dip at her lower back. “C’mere.” He moves his hand to nudge one of her legs, encouraging her to stretch out on top of his body.

 

“I was mapping,” She whines, pouting.

 

“Mine aren’t as interesting,” He mumbles into her hairline.

 

Mac lifts her body halfway up, pressing against his arm wrapped around her waist to squint down at him. “You just said scars tell a story.”

 

“Mine tell the story of a very sleepy man who used to play baseball and football and messed up his elbow and his knee and had surgery to fix them, the end,” Will mutters, tugging her close again.

 

“I don’t see why you got to hear about all of mine and I don’t get even a hint of reciprocity,” She complains, settling in draped across his chest despite herself.

“Reciprocity later. Sleep now.”

 

They lay there in silence for a while, and he’s nearly to sleep again when Mac shifts to draw the tangled sheets up over them.

 

“Sssh, go back to sleep,” she instructs, running her fingers gently through his hair in that way that never fails to send him into dreamland.

 

Will musters up enough energy for one last question, leaning subconsciously into her touch. “Seriously, Jim got shot in the ass?”

 

He drifts into sleep to the warm notes of her laughter and the slow pass of her fingers through his hair, content.

* * *

 

_Your hills and valleys_

_Are mapped by my intrepid fingers_

_And in a naked slumber_

_I dream all this again_

**_“Crack the Shutters”--Snow Patrol_ **

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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